Progressives: Thanksgiving Is All About Immigrants

Thanksgiving is not about English settlers thanking God for helping them survive in the wilderness they remake into the United States, but it is really about Americans’ duty to welcome whatever migrants the government delivers to their door, according to the New York Times and various progressives.

The Soviet-style rewrite of Americans’ culture was displayed by a New York Times’ editorial and by a firm of immigration lawyers, which tweeted the post-Thanksgiving message: “‘Thanksgiving’: Our National Holiday About Welcoming Immigrants.”

The New York Times argued that Thanksgiving is not about Americans, but about migrants’ supposed right sit down at the Americans’ own table.

Lincoln may well have anticipated all those [religious] convictions [of immigrants]— Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish and Christian — when in 1863 he proclaimed the last Thursday in November to be “a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.” It was formally changed in 1941 to the fourth Thursday in November.

Lincoln knew his Bible, and was surely familiar with a passage from Exodus all too often ignored in our present era of hard feelings: “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.” Lincoln mentioned God but no particular faith in his proclamation. We may presume that all were thus declared welcome to sit at the American table.

That open-borders theme was echoed by the progressive Catholic hierarchy, which issued a Thanksgiving message from Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He declared:

So this year, I give thanks for the gift and contributions of immigrants and refugees to our great nation. I also pray that next year, families now under threat will not be broken and dispersed, but instead will be united in joy around their tables, giving thanks for all the blessings our nation has to offer.

Other progressives tried to make the Thanksgiving-is-about-immigrants claim. “Native Americans welcomed immigrant Pilgrims in the first Thanksgiving,” was the headline at an Alabama news site, Al.com, which insisted:

The Native Americans welcomed the arriving immigrants and helped them survive. Then they celebrated together, even though the Pilgrims considered the Native Americans heathens.

This Thanksgiving, our thoughts are with families who are separated by harsh & outdated immigration laws. We'll keep fighting for common-sense policies that keep families together on these special days. pic.twitter.com/kYuuwoLiGE

And there are plenty of immigrants who also recognize that Thanksgiving is about Americans, not about foreigners. Catholic News shared this quote from Samuel Abu, a Liberian now working in Philadelphia for Catholic Social Services:

We are thankful to God that we are able to live this life and pray for the families who are not able to do this, especially my father and my mother. We thank God for our jobs and our children and the opportunity to own our home.